The Sunday after Thanksgiving, our decorating team brought some festive Christmas cheer to our church facility by putting up decorations.

This year we had a lot of new decorations in our lobby. But the funny thing was we didn’t spend a penny!

This was because we had another church that generously passed on their older Christmas decorations. Like a nativity set. (Two, actually. One was put upstairs.)

Hanging snowflakes…

Lighted reindeer…

(Glen tried to be funny and put brown blobs of paper behind the reindeer so it looked like reindeer poop. I made him remove it. Those children ministry directors, man.)

Ornaments on the trees and a big swag of greenery too!

We also had our family’s Christmas tree in the lobby (because it doesn’t fit in our house) and used leftover ribbon to decorate it.

The Boy Scouts donated a large live tree! No star? Not a problem. Ashley made a ribbon topper for the tree.

People donated poinsettas to add extra pizzazz! Our lobby looks especially beautiful at night when you can’t see the leftover blue Tardis that is still there from Breakaway summer camp this past July.

Here’s a night picture. I guess you can’t see the Christmas lights as well but in real life there’s a very nice feel when you walk in among all the lights.

These wreaths used to be in the worship center but this year we went with a blue theme in there so there was a perfect place behind the counter for the wreaths. Somebody said they wanted to buy the reindeer table topper. That had been donated too.

Ashley came up with a good idea when our swag fell as little short. She put a colorful red ribbon on the end.

Lit reindeer look a lot different with the lights on!

The entrance is flanked by the two reindeer. The wreath is hung from the exit sign. We are into efficiency around here. Why screw hooks into the ceiling with an exit sign has protrusions you can use?

We had anyone from teenagers to seniors helping out — climbing on ladders, fluffing trees, arranging decorations and making things. It took all afternoon and some people even came back the next day to help with the worship center.